A book that makes a landmark work easier to read but robs it of much of its verve.
A recasting of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense into more familiar, approachable prose.
The 1776 publication of Paine’s pamphlet was a momentous historical event. It contributed to the debate about the Colonies separating from England, and it effectively captured the political implications of accepting the doctrine of natural rights. Debut author Scott argues that the Founding Father’s arguments should interest everyone, not just Americans, as “Many of these issues have ramifications and rely on principles that affect people around the world.” However, the work’s archaic language, he says, makes it largely inaccessible. In order to rectify this, he’s rendered the entire work into plain, contemporary parlance while also preserving its original meaning. Scott faithfully follows Paine’s original structure, maintaining the same sequence of chapters and leaving the historical references unchanged. He doesn’t provide a running, interpretive commentary, but he does preface his revision with a very brief synopsis of the events leading up to the book’s publication and to the Revolutionary War. The author does largely achieve his overall aim, meticulously employing terminology and sentence structures that modern readers will indeed find more familiar. However, his claim that the pamphlet’s original prose is virtually unintelligible is vastly overstated. Consider this line from Paine’s actual work: “And there is no instance, in which we have shewn less judgment, than in endeavouring to describe, what we call, the ripeness or fitness of the Continent for independance.” Here’s Scott’s reworking: “In every instance, good judgment has shown and described the ability of America to be independent.” The former doesn’t seem that confusing, and the latter doesn’t seem all that different. However, Paine’s famously inflammatory prose—no small part of the pamphlet’s historical success—has been thoroughly domesticated throughout.
A book that makes a landmark work easier to read but robs it of much of its verve.Pub Date: Nov. 26, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5439-4678-9
Page Count: 68
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: Feb. 14, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
American schools at every level, from kindergarten to postgraduate programs, have substituted ideological indoctrination for education, charges conservative think-tanker Sowell (Senior Fellow/Hoover Institution; Preferential Polices, 1990, etc.) in this aggressive attack on the contemporary educational establishment. Sowell's quarrel with "values clarification" programs (like sex education, death-sensitizing, and antiwar "brainwashing") isn't that he disagrees with their positions but, rather, that they divert time and resources from the kind of training in intellectual analysis that makes students capable of reasoning for themselves. Contending that the values clarification programs inspired by his archvillain, psychotherapist Carl Rogers, actually inculcate values confusion, Sowell argues that the universal demand for relevance and sensitivity to the whole student has led public schools to abdicate their responsibility to such educational ideals as experience and maturity. On the subject of higher education, Sowell moves to more familiar ground, ascribing the declining quality of classroom instruction to the insatiable appetite of tangentially related research budgets and bloated athletic programs (to which an entire chapter, largely irrelevant to the book's broader argument, is devoted). The evidence offered for these propositions isn't likely to change many minds, since it's so inveterately anecdotal (for example, a call for more stringent curriculum requirements is bolstered by the news that Brooke Shields graduated from Princeton without taking any courses in economics, math, biology, chemistry, history, sociology, or government) and injudiciously applied (Sowell's dismissal of student evaluations as responsible data in judging a professor's classroom performance immediately follows his use of comments from student evaluations to document the general inadequacy of college teaching). All in all, the details of Sowell's indictment—that not only can't Johnny think, but "Johnny doesn't know what thinking is"—are more entertaining than persuasive or new.
Pub Date: Jan. 4, 1993
ISBN: 0-02-930330-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The sub-title of this book is "Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools." But one finds in it little about education, and less about the teaching of English. Nor is this volume a defense of the Christian faith similar to other books from the pen of C. S. Lewis. The three lectures comprising the book are rather rambling talks about life and literature and philosophy. Those who have come to expect from Lewis penetrating satire and a subtle sense of humor, used to buttress a real Christian faith, will be disappointed.
Pub Date: April 8, 1947
ISBN: 1609421477
Page Count: -
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1947
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